An innovative method of controlling and optimizing car painting processes

太赫兹(THz)辐射是介于微波和红外辐射之间的电磁频谱的一部分。它可以穿透一系列材料-包括聚合物、陶瓷和半导体-同时可以揭示这些材料的内部微结构的极佳对比度。通过使用太赫兹辐射脉冲，类似于执行雷达成像的方式，可以利用这一特性进行非破坏性测试。利用这种测量原理，已经开发了许多应用，例如测量药片上的聚合物涂层的厚度。该技术在高价值制造中显示出巨大的应用前景，该项目旨在开辟太赫兹传感的新工业应用：涂装是汽车行业制造过程中不可或缺的一部分。应用于现代汽车的油漆涂层包括复杂的层结构，每一层的完整性对涂层的整体性能至关重要。目前用于确保油漆涂层最终完整性的质量控制策略缓慢，需要人工测试，每个测试周期只能覆盖几辆精选汽车上的有限数量的采样点。缺乏实时检测能力背后的主要瓶颈是没有足够快速和准确的非接触式测量技术来完成这项任务。当前的方案旨在通过开发一种太赫兹传感器来消除这一瓶颈，该传感器能够使用可直接用于现有生产线喷漆室的六轴机器人实时测量涂料质量和涂层完整性。我们的研究将对确保这些测量的有效性做出重要贡献，这对在汽车行业部署这项技术至关重要。作为该项目的一部分，我们的目标是开发可用于实现直接质量控制反馈回路的技术平台。

Terahertz (THz) radiation forms part of the electromagnetic spectrum, between microwave and infrared radiation. It can penetrate a range of materials - including polymers, ceramics and semiconductors - and at the same time it can reveal excellent contrast of the internal microstructures of such materials. This property can be exploited for non-destructive testing by using pulses of terahertz radiation similar to the way radar imaging is performed. Using this measurement principle a number of applications, such as measuring the thickness of polymer coatings on pharmaceutical tablets, havebeen developed. The technology has shown great promise for applications in high value manufacturing and this project aims to open up a new industrial application for terahertz sensing:Painting is an integral part of the manufacturing process in the automotive industry. The paint coats that are applied to modern cars comprise a complex structure of layers, with the integrity of each layer being of critical importance to the overall performance of the coating. The current quality control strategy that is used to ensure the final integrity of the paint coat is slow, requires manual testing and can only cover a limited number of sampling points on a few select cars per test cycle. The main bottleneck behind this lack of real-time testing capability is that there is no non-contact measurement technology available that is fast and accurate enough for this task.It is this bottleneck that the current proposal aims to remove by developing a terahertz sensor that is capable of performing real-time measurements of the paint quality and layer integrity in real-time using a six-axis robot that can be directly employed in the spray booth of existing manufacturing lines. Our research will make a vital contribution to ensuring the validity of these measurements, which is of paramount importance to deploying this technology in the automotive industry.As part of this project we aim to develop the technology platform that can be used to implement direct quality control feedback loops.